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Oct. 25, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:12
The Great Leap Backward | Ep. 646
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As the nation reels from a spate of attempted mail bombings, Democrats and the media blame President Trump, President Trump blames the media, and the stock market tumbles.
So it's good times all around.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all of the latest in just one second.
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Okay, so, the latest with regard to this spate of quote-unquote attempted mail bombings is that it is possible that the bombs themselves were not actually structured to detonate.
So, Ala Pandit over at Hot Air writes, Judging by social media, some have glanced at an AP story and thought it was claimed that the explosive powder inside the bomb was harmless.
Not so.
A package sent to CNN contained a pipe bomb and an envelope with a mystery powder inside.
It's a mystery powder that's harmless.
The bombs themselves are supposedly workable and functional if crude, although there are other reports that suggest that the bombs lacked a detonator, and so this was either a test run or a hoax or something else like that.
We're still awaiting more information, and that is the key today.
Awaiting more information.
It's not the end of the world to say that we need more information, and this holds true on every side.
Yesterday, I said there were a bunch of folks who jumped to the false flag explanation.
Now, I'm not claiming that you are not allowed to speculate inside your own head as to who you think did this, or that you're not allowed to wonder whether there's enough information to condemn one side or the other.
What I am saying is if you are 100% sure this is a false flag, if you are 100% sure you went right there, like right away, you just went to, this is probably the Democrats hoaxing themselves, That's not good, okay?
You shouldn't be using confirmation bias as a substitute for evidence.
And this is true in so many cases in our politics, I can't even tell you.
I've been saying this for years.
I mean, I remember with the Michael Brown case.
Michael Brown, black guy, shot by a cop.
And enormous swaths of the left, the entire left, basically said, this is a case of police racism and brutality in which a man was shot in the back because he was black.
And I said, well, let's wait for more evidence.
And then the evidence came out and it turns out that wasn't the story at all.
Well, here, if you're jumping to either this is Democrats hoaxing themselves or this is Donald Trump planting bombs in the mailboxes over at CNN, let me suggest to you that you're totally full of crap.
Hey, you don't know.
You don't know yet.
You know, I know you don't know yet because no one knows yet.
I don't know yet.
You don't know yet.
The press don't know yet.
And anybody suggesting they know who did this or why it was done or what the connection is to any particular political party is lying to you.
They don't have the information yet.
Now, there's some indicators that Something weird is going on.
I mean, this person who should be put in jail forever, the person who is doing this, has now sent one of these packages to Robert De Niro, I guess, and sent one to Maxine Waters.
And a picture of one of the bombs at the CNN Bureau appears to have a parody of an ISIS flag taken from a meme that was circulating on right-wing corners of the internet since 2014.
According to NBC News, the printout appears to show a parody flag that replaces Arabic characters with a silhouette of three women in high heels and a middle inscription reading, Get Her Done, which is the catchphrase of Larry the Cable Guy.
Daily Beast Lachlan Markey first noted that an image that appeared inside the explosive package sent to CNN's Time Warner building and addressed to Brennan for a striking similarity to the black and white flag of the terror group.
And then they confirmed that this was, in fact, an ISIS flag parody.
So this is leading people on the left to suggest that really what this is is a right-wing hoax and people on the right to suggest this is a left-wing hoax.
And again, again, you don't know?
I don't know.
Nobody knows.
But here's what I do know.
I don't really believe that this is a person who sits up nights thinking, President Trump is telling me to go bomb people.
And I don't believe this is a person who's sitting up nights going, people on the left are telling me to bomb people.
I think this person is a crazy person.
I think this person is a loon bag who wants to pursue violence.
How do I know that?
Because they're sending bombs to Robert De Niro.
Robert De Niro, this is not somebody who smacks of, I'm a sophisticated domestic terrorist with a serious political agenda, deeply intertwined with the workings of modern politics.
And here's where it gets dangerous.
I said this yesterday.
People who are immediately jumping to Trump's rhetoric caused this, or the media's rhetoric caused this, those people are undermining the First Amendment.
Because the First Amendment's basic guarantee is that if I am not inciting you to violence, in my incitement to violence, I mean saying, go bomb someone.
Then I am not responsible for your violent actions.
You know who's responsible for the violent actions here?
The guy who put together bombs and mailed them to people.
That's the guy responsible.
Not President Trump, not CNN, not any of these folks.
Just as Bernie Sanders was not responsible for a Bernie Sanders supporter going and attempting to shoot up a congressional baseball game, and just as Barack Obama was not responsible for a apparent fan of Barack Obama trying to shoot up police officers in Dallas, President Trump is not responsible for this.
The media are not responsible for this.
And I don't have to wait for the outcome to know that.
You know why?
Because the sort of rhetoric that President Trump has used, as much as I dislike it, as much as I have ripped it on this program for years, he has never once said, go mail bombs to my political opponents.
And shouting, lock her up, is not the same thing as saying, mail her a bomb.
It may raise the temperature.
It may be bad for our politics.
It may, in fact, lead people to condemn each other at higher rates.
We talked about that yesterday.
But it is not, in fact, incitement to violence.
The standard for incitement to violence is extraordinarily high under American law, as well it should be.
Well, President Trump reacted to all of this yesterday, and his first statement was, we all have to unify.
You know, these are trying times, but we all have to understand that violence is not appropriate.
And I just want to tell you that in these times, we have to unify.
We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.
Okay, well, that seems about the right answer, doesn't it?
That's the right answer, and what he really should add at the end of that is, listen, I use charged rhetoric, my opponents use charged rhetoric, maybe we all should take a step back and tone that down, but the reality is that nobody, not me, not my political opponents, nobody has actually incentivized this kind of violence in the United States.
Nobody in the United States is inciting this kind of violence in mainstream political rhetoric, which is true, okay?
If you actually want to see mainstream violence being pushed by political agitators, all you have to do is look at actual governments in Iran, where they literally chant death to America and call for violence against Jews.
All you have to do is look at the government of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, actual terrorist groups.
All you have to do is look at governments around the world, repressive governments around the world that make clear they want violence done to their political opponents.
Even President Trump's worst statements, where he's making jokes about Greg Gianforte, which we talked about last week, body slamming a reporter.
There is an actual difference, it turns out, between body slamming a reporter and bombing someone.
Now, if somebody went out and punched a reporter and said, I did it because President Trump was making this sort of remark about Greg Gianforte and making light of that, I would say, okay, there's at least some connection there, but I'm not going to say that there's a connection between people sending mail bombs to Maxine Waters and the President of the United States saying that Maxine Waters is a very low IQ individual.
We say that kind of stuff about each other all the time in a free country.
Maybe it's not the best thing to say, but that doesn't mean it's an incitement to violence.
This kind of stuff has to stop.
It really does.
But the media are not stopping it.
And President Trump fires back in just a second.
The media obviously are not lowering the temperature.
It's amazing to watch members of the media claim that violent rhetoric began with President Trump or overheated rhetoric.
Not violent rhetoric.
Overheated rhetoric began with President Trump.
If it weren't for Trump, we wouldn't have anything like this.
Really?
Ricin was sent to Senator Susan Collins two weeks ago.
A year and a half ago, a Bernie Sanders supporter shot or attempted to shoot 36 Congress people and nearly killed the House Majority Whip.
Donald Trump Jr.' 's wife was sent an actual toxic substance.
She had to go to the hospital for it.
This is like two and a half months ago.
No, this is not all Trump.
No, it didn't start with Trump.
This has been true in the United States for a very long time.
People use charged political rhetoric.
That does not mean violence is okay, but violence has been commonplace in political circles for literally decades.
In the 1960s and 1970s, bombings were actually quite routine in the United States.
They're not routine, thank God, now.
And we have an eye out for them, as well we should.
But to pretend that the world began spinning with President Trump is just absurd, especially considering some of the rhetoric that is used on a fairly frequent basis by folks on the left about President Trump himself.
So, for example, today, In the New York Times, or yesterday in the New York Times.
There's an actual piece in the New York Times.
It's a fiction piece.
It says five novelists imagine Trump's next chapter.
This is in the New York Times.
It's in their book review section.
And here's what they say.
They say, our focus here at the book review is on books and stories, but also on how the books being written and read reflect the world outside of books.
And one of the biggest stories out there, of course, is the Mueller investigation and the relationship between Trump and Putin.
It's hard not to speculate about what might happen next.
To that end, we thought, who better than some of today's most talented spy and crime novelists?
One of these novelists, a person named Zoe Sharpe.
Here's what Zoe Sharpe wrote.
This is in the pages of the New York Times Book Review.
Okay, quote.
The Russian landed at Dulles after 48 hours of traveling.
Of necessity, he came from Moscow by a circuitous route, a long way with a very specific task.
There would be no return flight.
In the airport bars, the TVs were tuned to different news channels, but the story was the same.
First, the president's campaign manager, then his lawyer, a Republican congressman, former aides, family members.
Those who weren't indicted were subpoenaed.
House arrests had become fashionable.
And then it goes on and on about how this guy was basically shadowing the president of the United States.
And here's where Zoe Sharpe gets to the key.
When it was time, he went downstairs, took his place in the lobby before the entourage appeared.
The hotel staff had been lined up to see their boss, the President, go by.
A few of them applauded.
Most did not.
The President didn't seem to notice.
He waved in his desultory fashion.
The Secret Service agents clustered around him, ushered him toward the armored limo idling outside at the curb.
The Russian waited until they were a few steps past before he drew the gun.
He sighted it on the center of the President's back and squeezed the trigger.
The Makarov misfired.
The Secret Service agent at the President's shoulder heard the click, spun into a crouch.
He registered the scene instantly, drawing his own weapon with razor-edge reflexes.
The Russian tasted failure.
He closed his eyes and waited to pay the cost.
It did not come.
He opened his eyes.
The Secret Service agent stood before him, presenting his Glock butt first.
Here, the agent said politely, use mine.
And this was printed in the New York Times the same day that the media decided that President Trump was the one who was pursuing violent rhetoric and was the only one pursuing violent rhetoric.
So I'll take a step back here.
Everyone is overheated.
It needs to stop.
A few things can be true at once.
1.
Wait for all the evidence.
2.
Don't blame non-violent but overheated rhetoric for violence.
And 3.
If you want to take the temperature down, you have to obey 1 and 2.
If you want to take the temperature down, wait for evidence, and don't blame people for violent acts by third parties unless they are actively telling the third parties to commit the violent acts.
You want a better country?
That's what we're all gonna need to do.
And that means don't jump to confirmation bias as soon as humanly possible.
Okay, I'm gonna get to the media's response to all of this, which is just egregious, and then President Trump's response to the media.
Basically, everyone is acting badly here.
Everyone is acting as badly as can be, which has become the usual state of affairs in American politics.
It's really quite awful.
But we'll get to that in just a second.
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Okay, so the media have decided that President Trump is to blame, which was predictable.
Again, I'm old enough to remember when I said, and many like me on the right said, Bernie Sanders is not to blame for the congressional baseball shooting.
The left has no such qualms.
The mainstream left has no such qualms.
So Paul Waldman in the Washington Post actually just blames the President of the United States straight out.
He just blames him straight out.
He says, allow me to suggest that blame is too narrow a way to make sense of a series of attempted bombings aimed at precisely the people Trump and other Republicans spend a huge amount of time vilifying.
We don't have to look for clues about whether the person responsible has a MAGA hat or what their party registration is.
We don't have to assign direct blame beyond a reasonable doubt.
What we can say is this, given what Trump has done and said, this was absolutely predictable.
In fact, it's a wonder it took this long.
So, in other words, we don't need to wait for evidence, right?
This is a guy who's overtly making the case in one of the nation's premier newspapers.
You don't need to wait for evidence.
And if you wait for evidence, then you're doing something wrong.
Instead, I'm going to jump to the conclusion I want to jump to, which is that President Trump is responsible for all of this.
Here's what Waldman says.
It's not just that Trump advocates violence against his political opponents, though he does, it's that everything about his rhetoric pushes his supporters in that direction, even if the overwhelming majority will never quite get to the point where they'll actually commit this kind of act of terrorism.
Well, there are those of us on the right who felt that President Obama verged pretty easily on promoting violence sometimes when he talked about what the police were, when he talked about how the police were Overtly and systemically racist.
When he said that sort of stuff, we felt like, okay, well, you know, is that an indication that maybe violence is okay?
There are folks in New York who felt that way.
People on the NYPD who felt that way.
So much so that when Bill de Blasio, after ripping the police for months, actually went to a policeman's funeral who was shot to death, members of the NYPD turned their back on him.
Was Bill de Blasio responsible for the violence?
No, he wasn't.
Was Barack Obama responsible for the violence?
No, he wasn't.
And you know what?
You actually have to wait for evidence if you're going to even make that case, because that case is extraordinarily... The bar for evidence is extraordinarily high here.
If you want to blame somebody for violence incitement, you actually have to have evidence.
But the left doesn't care about evidence.
They're not interested in evidence.
And this prompted Jeff Zucker to sound off.
So, Jeff Zucker is the head of CNN.
Let's all remember, CNN has not been particularly measured in its rhetoric with regard to the President of the United States or with regard to the right.
Every conspiracy theory that has been promoted against President Trump has been actively pushed by the folks at CNN.
Everything.
They've spent two years fulminating over supposed Russian collusion every day on the air, non-stop.
Folks on the left, they love CNN specifically because CNN has basically become a propaganda outlet in many ways for the anti-Trump agenda.
But Jeff Zucker says that when a bomb was sent to CNN headquarters, then that's because of President Trump.
So here is what Jeff Zucker said.
He put out a statement.
He said, there is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.
The president and especially the White House press secretary should understand their words matter.
Thus far, they've shown no comprehension of that.
Again, I do not understand why Jeff Zucker thinks that the president of the United States is responsible for a bomb being sent to CNN headquarters just because the president says that he doesn't like the press or the press are the enemy of the people.
I don't like that language either.
I think that language is bad.
But that is not language saying, go send a bomb to the people at CNN.
That's not a thing.
The President of the United States, in response to the media basically ginning up outrage at him and at the right, Is, I think, not entirely inappropriate.
So, first of all, I will say this.
President Trump has used rhetoric I don't like at all.
He's used rhetoric that I think is immoral with regard to the press.
I think he has used rhetoric with regard to his political opposition that is immoral.
Does that mean, again, he is inciting violence?
No.
And the press have used very similar rhetoric about President Trump.
Does that mean they are inciting violence?
No, it doesn't.
Heated rhetoric and violent rhetoric are not the same thing.
And to link the two means that eventually somebody's just going to say, let's censor all the rhetoric because otherwise it's going to lead to violence.
Here is President Trump going after the media.
Basically, the media and President Trump can't stop clobbering each other.
And I think there's some truth on both sides and there's a lot of falsehood on both sides.
Here's the president saying, stop with the media scares.
The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories.
Have to do it.
Okay, now, I agree with the president that the media do a horrible job of covering the news.
And in response to President Trump, they promote even more falsehood, and more fakery, and more divisive politics.
This is what they do.
But, is there any question that President Trump is trolling them?
Of course not, because President Trump has used similar rhetoric about the media.
Basically, this is two folks slapping each other Napoleon Dynamite style in the face, and then blaming each other when a guy down the street decides he's gonna go bomb the local school.
Not the same thing.
She tweeted out, "President Trump asked Americans to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the USA.
Yet you chose to divide and attack.
America should unite against all political violence." Okay, that is correct.
That is correct.
And I don't understand why President Trump is getting bashed for saying the right thing at that rally or at the White House.
And then he is getting bashed on the other side when he goes after the media.
Anyway, in any case, CNN demonstrating full-scale That they are going to go with this narrative, right?
They never went with this narrative with regard to Bernie Sanders.
They never went with this narrative with regard to the attempted attacks on Susan Collins.
But they are going to go full scale with these attacks on President Trump.
So here's CNN's Gloria Borger saying, you know, Trump's targets, is it a coincidence?
President Trump attacks a bunch of people and then those people get mail bombs.
You know what we do in politics?
We attack people on the other side and their ideas.
Now, I attack people on the other side all the time.
Does that mean I'm calling for a bombing of their house?
Of course not.
And people who attack me online are not calling for a bombing of my house.
That's not a thing.
But here's Gloria Borger blaming Trump.
You know, these are names, as you point out, that come up all the time in his rallies.
I mean, he's not particularly kind to Barack Obama either.
So I think it would have behooved him to be a little bit more complete in his statement.
So now we are going to conflate.
We're going to conflate President Trump ripping Barack Obama with President Trump calling for violence against Barack Obama.
If that's the case, then CNN calls for violence against Donald Trump every single day.
Because CNN spends its days ripping on President Trump, and now we are conflating criticism of political figures with a call for violence against those political figures.
It's just, this is bad stuff.
You can condemn rhetoric you don't like without blaming it for violence, and yet, as we'll see, folks in the media and folks on the Democratic side of the aisle are more than happy to, you know, they like to use the word weaponize, to weaponize politics in particular in this fashion in order to try and Push for a ban, basically, on their opposition.
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I have to say that I think that the reaction...
of the left on this has been absolutely abysmally immoral, just bad.
When they suggest that President Trump not liking his political opposition is to blame for somebody sending bombs to members of his political opposition, all I have to say is you are trying to outlaw politics.
In the end, what you're trying to do is outlaw your political opposition.
When I spoke at Berkeley, there are people outside chanting, speech is violence.
That's basically the chant that's happening in CNN headquarters here.
But it's completely hypocritical, by the way, also, because what the left and what the folks at CNN really mean is that speech is only violent if it is coming from the right.
Here's an example.
So, Don Lemon rips into Trump.
He says, you know, President Trump is blaming members of the media, and he's being mean, and he's being cruel, and it's not nice.
He's blaming members of the media, who are really the victims in all of this.
Well, let's be real.
They're the victims of the bomber, but they are not necessarily the victims of President Trump.
The media can stand on their own two feet, and they are fully capable of fighting back against the president, as they have been for the last three years.
Here is Don Lemon saying, President Trump blamed the victim.
He had that opportunity.
He blamed the victim tonight.
For him to sit there and blame us, we're the victims here.
And only us.
It's disgusting.
He says, you know, we're the victims here.
We're the victims here.
Again, CNN, we're the victims.
But not of President Trump.
Not when it comes to this.
President Trump was saying that the overheated rhetoric on the part of the media are contributing to a bad environment in the United States, and the response of the folks in the media is, let's overheat the rhetoric even more.
And I'm sorry, but this is overdone.
Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon on CNN hugging each other outside of CNN in the middle of a segment.
Here is them doing this.
You know, all these folks who are acting as though there's some sort of existential threat to the media in the United States, I'm sorry, no.
I'm sorry, no.
There isn't.
Okay, this is a bad incident.
Thank you very much.
Be careful.
You know, all these folks who are acting as though there's some sort of existential threat to the media in the United States.
I'm sorry.
No, I'm sorry.
No, there isn't.
Okay, this is a bad incident.
There's no question it's a bad incident.
The reason I have a little bit of lack of sympathy for this, we almost died here routine is because this thing was stopped in the mailroom with no detonator on it, apparently.
My Jewish high school used to be evacuated three times a year for bomb threats minimum.
Three times a year.
And you know what?
It wasn't people hugging and kissing outside because There are crazy people out there.
There are crazy people out there.
But the way that CNN is treating this is that it's not crazy people.
It's perfectly sane people who are being directed by the President of the United States to attack them.
They're an institution under assault by the presidency who is calling for violence on behalf of his political friends.
No, no.
And you don't get to do this.
I'm sorry.
Don Lemon does not get to do this routine where the media are the victims at the same time that he is out there claiming that Antifa is wonderful.
This is just a couple of months ago.
This is just a couple of months ago.
Don Lemon claiming that Antifa, an actual violent terror group in the United States, is totally fine.
Um, no one condones the violence, but there were different reasons for Antifa and for these neo-Nazis, uh, to be there.
One, racist fascists.
The other group, fighting racist fascists.
So they're not that bad.
I mean, they're just fighting racist fascists, Antifa.
It's just...
Again, everyone is garbage, okay?
Moral of today's show, everyone is garbage.
Including Chris Matthews, or as MSH says.
I don't need any evidence.
Get up in the morning, come out of the shoe, run on in here, get in this rolly chair, run around all crazy like, and I just talk about whatever pops in my brain.
Say, Kathleen, get me coffee.
She says, get your own coffee, Chris.
And I say, okay, fine.
And then I come in without any coffee because I'm too lazy to go to the coffee machine.
Go, Chris Matthews, go!
They say there is no connection between what Trump has said about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, John Brennan, and CNN, and the thinking of the person who sent those pipe bombs is foolhardy.
How do you know that?
You don't know that.
He doesn't know that because he doesn't know things.
And yet everybody assumes the worst on behalf of everybody else.
And instead of us saying there's a difference between heated political rhetoric and violent political rhetoric, we just jump in with both feet.
The Democrats are even worse than the media on this because the Democrats are absolutely hypocritical and absurd.
So Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer put out a statement on these attempted bombings.
And here is what they said.
This is Emily Zanotti reporting over at Daily Wire.
She says, Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lashed out at President Donald Trump in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.
The pair jointly condemned a statement from the president issued earlier in the day expressing his concerns over a series of suspected explosive devices sent to prominent Democrats.
They say, we listened with great interest to the president's remarks this afternoon.
We all take an oath to support and defend the Constitution and protect the American people, and that is our first responsibility.
However, President Trump's words ring hollow until he reverses his statements that condone acts of violence.
Time and again, the President has condoned physical violence and divided Americans with his words and actions, expressing support for the congressman who bodyslammed a reporter, the neo-Nazis who killed a young woman in Charlottesville, his supporters at rallies who get violent with protesters, dictators around the world who murder their own citizens, and referring to the free press as the enemy of the people.
Now, I think President Trump says a lot of bad stuff.
Have I been unclear about this?
But, you're actually going to blame him for this bombing spate?
This is what you're going to do now?
I seem to remember somebody named Nancy Pelosi, just about a year and a half ago, who was asked about Steve Scalise nearly being shot to death.
He almost died.
Okay?
He was in critical condition.
He almost died.
It's a miracle that he lived.
Here's Nancy Pelosi saying, how dare you blame us or Bernie Sanders for heated rhetoric that could have been connected with the guy going onto a baseball field and shouting as he gunned down members of Congress about health care.
That's really what he was doing.
He was standing there screaming about health care while he tried to murder members of Congress.
Here was Nancy Pelosi's response at the time.
She was right then.
She's not right now.
What's the difference?
Now she gets to target right-wingers.
How dare they say such a thing?
How dare they?
So this sick individual does something despicable and it was horrible what he did, hateful.
But for them to all of a sudden be sanctimonious as if they don't never seen such a thing before.
It's just amazing.
So she's reversed.
I mean, I wonder what changed.
Oh, what changed is who is going to get blamed.
That's what changed.
So there is no such thing as a sword that cuts both ways.
All we have in the United States at this point are a bunch of hatchets.
Blunt on one end, directed toward you, and sharp on the other end, directed toward your opponent.
We don't recognize that what we're actually holding is a sword.
If you use it on your opponent, it can easily be turned back on you.
Every sword has two edges.
But according to the left, it's just a hatchet and you can bury it between the shoulder blades of your political opponents.
Hillary Clinton does the same thing.
So, the former first lady, senator, presidential candidate, she says, listen, as an American, I'm worried about the level of our rhetoric.
Well, as a person, I'm great.
As an American, I'm worried.
I worry about the direction of our country.
I worry about what kind of world will be waiting for them when their Teenagers and young adults and beyond.
Okay, and it wasn't just Hillary Clinton saying this.
Her top aide, Philippe Rains, who is really one of the most vicious people in American politics, he was on MSNBC and he explicitly just blamed President Trump's rhetoric for all of this.
This is someone who has weaponized Trump's Twitter feed and made it into a hit list.
He is addicted to their response and they are addicted to his vitriol.
Okay, so next time somebody who's a big Hillary Clinton fan decides to go and shoot up an office or invade a Fox News studio, then I guess we can blame Hillary Clinton.
Because after all, I recall when a minute ago, one minute ago, Hillary Clinton was saying you cannot be civil with the other side.
You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.
OK, so legitimately, 24, 14 days ago, 15 days ago, Hillary Clinton said this.
You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.
That's why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again.
But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.
OK, everybody is completely full of crap.
Everyone is completely full of crap.
We'll get to the fullness of the crap in just one second.
But first, let's talk about your ancestry.
So, you may have noticed that Elizabeth Warren released a genetic report recently.
It found that she is whiter than any human being ever found on planet Earth.
That she is as white as the moon at full waxing.
That's how white Elizabeth Warren is.
We wouldn't have known that, except for genetic testing.
Would you like to find out whether you're more Native American than Elizabeth Warren?
Well, then you should go check out 23andMe.
It's a DNA testing service that can offer insights into your ancestry, health, wellness, and traits.
It's actually a lot of fun, and it's really easy to do.
You simply spit into a tube provided in your 23andMe kit, and then you mail your gunk back to the lab to be analyzed.
The Bitter Taste Report and Sweet vs. Salt Reports can tell you how your DNA plays a role in determining food preferences that helps you change what kind of food you eat.
Sleep Reports, telling you if you're much more likely to be an especially deep sleeper.
You can have the Saturated Fat and Weight Reports, which tells you how your weight might be affected by saturated fats in your diet, so you can actually change your diet.
And the Lactose Intolerance Report that sheds insights into how your genetics could affect your ability to digest dairy products.
It's a lot of fun, and you're finding out where you come from, which is cool.
Order your 23andMe health and ancestry service kit at 23andMe.com slash Shapiro.
That's the number, 2323andMe.com slash Shapiro.
Go check them out right now and brag to your friends about whether you are, in fact, more Native American than a senator from Massachusetts who says that she's Native American.
Go check it out right now, 23andMe.com slash Shapiro.
Go check it out.
Okay, so, again, everyone is full of crap, including Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio.
Both of them came out and they said, listen, we have to turn down the temperature in this country.
And it has to start at the top.
Weird.
I remember when Bill de Blasio was saying that police officers were just shooting black people for no reason.
And I remember when Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, said that everyone who disagrees with him on politics should get out of the state.
That is not an exaggeration.
He said that there is no place in the state of New York for you if you don't believe in same-sex marriage and his views on social issues.
But don't worry, it's just, it's the rhetoric on the other side that's a problem.
Let me explain.
If you are sitting around today and you're going, it's always the rhetoric on the other side that's a problem, buy a freaking mirror.
Buy a freaking mirror.
Everybody has a role in tamping down some of the rhetoric here.
Everybody does.
And that also means that blaming the other side and suggesting that the other side is responsible for violence is leading to a worse country.
It's so funny.
Everybody thinks they're fighting violence when they suggest the other side is responsible for violence when they just use mainstream political rhetoric.
You're actually increasing the chances of violence when you do that because you are heating everything up.
You're suggesting the other side is so evil that the very utterance of their ideas is likely to lead to death, chaos, and destruction.
That's an un-American perspective.
It's un-American.
Bernie Sanders can say whatever the hell he wants, no matter how wrong he is.
And unless he is actively saying, go shoot people on a congressional baseball field, that is not his fault.
And Donald Trump can say whatever he wants, and you don't have to like it.
But whatever Donald Trump says, he has the right to say that so long as he is not saying, go beat up somebody right now, go bomb someplace right now.
We'll get to more of this in just one second, plus a couple of other crazy stories that are worth noting.
But you're going to have to subscribe.
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If I sound weary of all of this, it's because I am weary of all of this, really.
I mean, if we're going to have any sort of level-headed conversation, we're going to have to stop blaming each other for every crazy person who does a crazy thing.
This guy's a crazy person.
This isn't somebody in the White House.
This isn't somebody at the DNC headquarters.
This is a crazy person.
By the way, there's a lot more connection politically between a guy who is an actual Democratic staffer doxxing Republican members of Congress, like, two weeks ago, than there is relation between this person and Donald Trump or this person and CNN.
Enough is enough, folks.
Really.
Really.
Let's stop making the country a worse place.
I don't feel like this is preachy, because I think this is just common sense, and I think most of the people listening understand that.
Gross.
Okay.
In other news, NBC News is actively hyping this Megyn Kelly blackface thing, and it's really stupid.
It's really stupid.
So speaking of stupidity in politics, so Megyn Kelly, we talked about this at length yesterday, Megyn Kelly said on a show that she doesn't really understand why this woman who is in the Real Housewives of whatever, why this woman Was in trouble for dressing up as Diana Ross at a party because when she was a kid, people used to darken their skin for Halloween costumes and it wasn't a big deal.
And a bunch of folks said, well, blackface has a long and inglorious history in the United States.
That's insensitive.
She said, you know what?
I learned something today that's insensitive.
I was wrong.
That seems like that should be the end of the story.
Does anyone really believe Megyn Kelly is a brutal, vicious racist?
Does anyone actually believe that?
Of course, nobody believes that.
Nobody actually believes that Megyn Kelly thinks black people are inferior genetically and that black people are worse, black people are morally culpable at a higher level than white people or any of that.
No one actually believes that.
But NBC, and this just shows you that capitalism, when used by bad people, You know, is not great.
Okay, NBC wants to get rid of Megyn Kelly.
They want to get rid of Megyn Kelly because they tried to push Megyn Kelly into a box that is not properly fitted for Megyn Kelly.
Megyn Kelly is an excellent interviewer.
She's an excellent questioner.
She's a former lawyer and prosecutor.
That is where her role is best.
They tried to fit her into the Katie Couric fluff fluff morning news routine, and that didn't work for them.
And so the ratings were not good.
And so they had signed her to an inordinate amount of money, and now they're trying to push her out the door.
How are they doing that?
By actively stoking racial resentment in the United States.
I mean, this is ugly stuff.
NBC News is now saying they're going to air taped episodes of Meghan's show this week, and that they're going to seek to terminate her contract based on her saying that she didn't understand what the big deal was about somebody darkening their face for a Halloween costume.
Now, does anyone really believe that the NBC brass is really upset about that?
Or that a boycott is on its way?
Or that this was actually vicious, brutal, KKK-style racism?
Does anyone actually think that?
No, of course not.
This is just NBC News trying to stoke racial resentment for purposes of being able to fire somebody.
The head of NBC News, Andy Lack, he openly lit into Kelly after she apologized.
She apologized and then Lack said, quote, there is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks.
There is no place on our air or in this workplace for them.
Very unfortunate.
And then Lester Holt covered her comments on NBC Nightly News.
So the NBC decided to eat their own by going after Megyn Kelly.
It's amazing how convenient that is.
No one on CNN criticizes CNN.
Nobody on NBC News criticizes NBC News unless they're preparing to chop somebody up and throw them in the wood chipper.
And that's basically what NBC is doing here.
I wonder why nobody trusts the media.
I mean, this really is a great media story of just how corrupt the media are.
There's no question that NBC is just attempting to flame the- the- stoke the flames here in order so that they can make a move on Megyn Kelly that they wouldn't otherwise be able to make contractually.
So well done over at NBC, making the country a worse place so you can save some money on a host that you yourselves boxed in the wrong way.
Speaking of bad stories, so President Trump apparently has been exposing National security secret, supposedly, to outside prying eyes.
Now, before you say anything, folks on the right, before all of my conservative friends say, Hillary Clinton!
Emails!
Yoga!
I know.
It was bad.
We chanted, lock her up, right?
When I say we, not me, but there are a lot of people who said that she should have been locked up.
Now, I said that she should have been tried, that she committed a criminal act, according to the evidence that I saw.
With that said, that was bad.
You know what else is bad?
When President Trump does it.
Whataboutism is strong in our country right now.
Here is the story from the New York Times.
When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe, or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate Chinese spies are often listening and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.
Mr. Trump's aides have repeatedly warned him cell phone calls are not secure.
They've told him Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, but aides say that the president Who's been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones.
White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.
President should not be doing this.
Now, the president has denied the accounts.
The president says that he has not done any of this.
That, you know, this is all fake news.
Again, it's all fake news.
Maybe it's fake news, maybe it's not.
If it's not, Mr. President, please stop doing this, okay?
Like, really, it's not good.
And if we really believe that it's bad to expose America's national security secrets to prying eyes, then we probably shouldn't be doing it on our side either.
In other news, The stock market has taken a massive hit this month.
It is now at a full loss for the year.
Remember, we're already in October, so that means that all the gains of the last 10 months were basically erased over the course of October.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 608 points at 24,583 and erased all of its gains for 2018.
The S&P 500 dropped 3.1% to 2,656 and turned negative for the year.
Why?
Well, the earnings are down.
gains for 2018, the S&P 500 dropped 3.1% to 2,656 and turned negative for the year.
Why?
Well, the earnings are down.
So a lot of the tech earnings are down.
And also there are a lot of fears about the idea that the economy was overheated in advance of the tariffs that President Trump has put in place against China.
So people basically stocked up on products before the tariffs were set to hit, and that means that there are a lot of forecasts that the economy is actually not going to grow as much next quarter.
We have yet to see whether that is the case.
Also, the housing numbers are down.
There's a lot of uncertainty heading into the end of the year, according to J.J.
Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade.
It feels like people feel more comfortable spending short term rather than long term.
Now, it is quite possible some of this has to do with the midterm elections.
The feeling that Democrats could get into power and then start stymieing every possibility of deregulation.
That they could be looking to raise taxes again.
That they could look to cut a deal with President Trump to raise deficits and to blow out the spending.
That's going to have some impact on the market as well.
That's why it's imperative that if you like your economy, if you want to keep your economy, if you like your economy, you can keep your economy, but only if you keep electing the people who brought you that economy, namely the Republicans in Congress.
Even more so than the President.
The Republicans in Congress were responsible for President Obama not getting through his worst His worst legislative proposals, and they have been effectuating President Trump's economic policy for the last couple of years as well.
Now, what are the chances that the Republicans retain the House?
Well, they've been moving in the wrong direction in the House.
There's, according to FiveThirtyEight, a five and six chance that Democrats win control of the House.
The Senate, however, is a little bit different.
So they are forecasting that the Senate is going to be held by the Republicans in all likelihood.
And they say that right now the Senate is about 75% likely, that the Senate is, yeah, five in six chance Republicans keep control of the Senate, and they may gain up to two seats, two, three, four seats.
They say that there is a 17.8% chance that everything remains solid.
There is basically well within the bell curve that Republicans pick up anywhere from three to four seats, two to four seats.
That seems the most likely outcome at this point.
You know, all of that has led people on the right to suggest that maybe this latest bomb scare is some sort of democratic attempt to gin up voter rage just before the election.
But again, in the absence of evidence, I am not going to go there and I don't think anybody else should go there either.
We should not be Moving based on, again, you know, evidenceless allegations at this point.
I'm perfectly fine with waiting another 24 hours to find out what the hell is going on.
And I think everybody else should be too if we want to have a stronger and better country.
Okay, well, let's do some things I like and then some things I hate.
So, things that I like.
I think that everybody likes cartoons.
That's what I think.
I think America can unify around liking cartoons.
Our country used to be a lot more literate with regard to classical music particularly.
My kids know some classical music specifically because they have watched some of the old timey cartoons.
Now, a lot of people look at these cartoons like, those cartoons are violent.
Those cartoons are violent.
Again, connecting speech to violence.
If you really think watching Tom and Jerry clobber each other is what leads to people raping people or shooting people, you're out of your mind.
My kids watch these cartoons, and you know what they don't do?
Slam the piano on each other's hands.
This cartoon actually won an Oscar.
It's called The Cat Concerto, and what you're going to hear is Tom.
Tom's the cat, Jerry's the mouse.
Tom is going to be playing Hungarian Rhapsody No.
2 by Liszt.
Here's a little bit of this cartoon, which is just hilarious.
Here's a little bit of this.
Here's a little bit of this.
So this is great.
This isn't the only cartoon of this era that used classical music.
There are a bunch of Bugs Bunny cartoons that use classical music, particularly The Barber of Seville.
There's a very famous one.
There's a very famous one of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd doing a Wagner opera, which is pretty great.
There's one of Bugs Bunny as Leopold Stokowski, the famous conductor.
It used to be that people actually were cultured.
You know, this is one of the great lies that was told in the 1950s about the United States is that America was hollowing out, our soul was gone, we were a bunch of consumerists.
The fact is, more Americans attended classical concerts during like 1954 than attended baseball games.
Americans were actually seeking to educate themselves in new and interesting ways, and the availability of new means of listening to music like this was one of the reasons for that.
So, worth checking out.
And yes, you can show it to your small children, and they won't hit each other with pianos.
It's okay.
Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
The left love science.
When I say they love science, I mean they really don't like science very much.
What they like to do is speculate about science and then use the weakest possible scientific findings in order to push the idea that public policy should be shifted in their direction.
The latest example is incredibly stupid.
Okay, the latest example is from Vox.com, the great explaining website that explains nothing.
The piece is by Dylan Matthews and Bird Pinkerton.
Dylan Matthews is just awful.
And here's what they write.
Some researchers think putting lithium in our water could save lives.
So they actually want to lace the water you get from the tap with lithium, an actual psychiatric drug.
Here is what he writes.
Lithium is a potent psychiatric drug, one of the primary prescribed medications for bipolar disorder, but it's also an element that occurs naturally all over the earth's crust, including in bodies of water.
That means small quantities of lithium wind up in the tap water you consume every day.
Just how much is in the water varies quite a bit from place to place.
Naturally, that made researchers curious.
Are places with more lithium in the water healthier mentally?
Well, there's a study in 2014.
Reviewing other studies, they found four or five studies reviewed found that places with higher levels of trace lithium had lower suicide rates.
Well, this one would fall under the category of correlation does not equal causation, Buried deep down in the article is this news.
The size of the numbers that are being claimed should make you skeptical.
There are huge, arguably implausibly huge, effects.
The Open Philanthropy Project, which had previously been quite interested in new research on lithium, states on its website that the study makes us substantially less optimistic.
A 2017 study that traced lithium really helps guard against suicide.
Just this year, a study using healthcare claims data in the U.S.
found greater amounts of trace lithium in the water didn't predict lower diagnoses of bipolar disorder or dementia.
So why hasn't it been tried?
Because there's no science that suggests that it really works.
Also, if you really want to make Americans paranoid, really, start lacing their water.
Good idea.
Good idea, guys.
You want to make Americans paranoid?
Start lacing their water not with fluoride, which the crazies already think is controlling your brain.
Start lacing it with actual psychiatric drugs to pacify the population.
Good luck with that.
See how that goes in America.
Aye yi yi yi yi.
Well, I mean, I guess we're all crazy enough that we don't actually have to... We don't have to wait for the lithium.
We're all mutts at this point.
So, we'll be back here tomorrow.
We'll break down more of the nuttiness and we'll do the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
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